


a little in you, a little in me

by twoif



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 15:34:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19976407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoif/pseuds/twoif
Summary: Down on the west coast, take two.It's the line of a guileless man, the kind of pure human being who could listen to someone tell a story like,listen, my friend heard I was in town for the night and rushed over to have sex,and never see anything indecent about the relationship. You hate him for a few, desperate seconds, letting that hate trickle down the line of Kagami's broad back, catch like the bright light of the window on his necklace, slide across his hair and skin dark against the white hotel towel. But it dissipates, like always, because of course he's right. You're pleased. This is what you had dreamed about, when you were in Tokyo wondering whether you should extend your stay and call up him anyway. Like all things Kagami, it's a dream that wanders, fully realized, into your palm, and waits for you to fuck it up.





	a little in you, a little in me

**Author's Note:**

> This is another version of "[a bet about us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8377963)," a story I'd written earlier also about Kagami and Kuroko taking a short drive down California. If you want to hear more rambling about how this version came about, skip to the notes at the end. Otherwise, enjoy (?!).

When you find out the conference you're presenting at is in San Francisco, you call him up on FaceTime. "That's still so far," he says doubtfully. Like always, he is holding the phone too close to him, focused on his face and nothing else, and you can just barely make out a flash of his refrigerator in the background, the strings of his apron around his neck. In your head, the math is instantaneous: it is 7PM in Los Angeles. Kagami is probably cooking.

"But closer than Tokyo," you point out. Your fingers are drumming on the table next to you. You watch them, distantly, as if they belong to someone else.

"You know how far you'd be from L.A.?"

 _A six hour drive. A two hour flight._ You looked it up just now. "No," you lie.

"It's far," Kagami says, again, like he's lost all his fluency in Japanese and can only explain this much, which is probably the case. "A plane ride. Or a long bus ride. It won't be worth it."

"Will you be busy?" you try.

"Kuroko," Kagami sighs, and you shut up.

_It's far_ and _you'd barely have any time_ turns out to mean that he's waiting for you when you get back to your hotel room on the last night of the conference. He's sleeping in one of the room's chintzy armchairs, a gym bag at his feet and traces of drool on his chin. When you were in Japan, you used to think that he looked massive, dangerously so. Here, in the dim light of the bedside lamp, he looks all the right proportions, only his legs a little too long for the table.

"Kagami-kun is creepy," you say when you kick him awake.

"I know," he yawns. "But Momoi said she'd help me find you."

"I have to meet an old professor of mine for drinks in a few minutes," you say. "I just came back to change." Then, meanly, "You really should have called ahead. What if I had called the police?"

"You wouldn't have, once you saw it was me," he says simply, which cuts the meanness clean out of you. He rubs his eyes. "I figured you'd be busy with the, you know," he says as he flaps his hands at his surroundings. He pitches forward a few steps, and you're ready, arms about to reach out for him, but instead he collapses on the single king-sized bed in the room, just barely managing to strip away the duvet to expose the clean white sheets underneath.

"I'll just be napping here until you get back." His hand pats the pillow next to him twice. It is an accident, probably, that it looks like an invitation.

These were the things that made it hard for you, time and time again, to give him up, you think as you count to fifteen and listen to his breathing slow. That Kagami came and went, usually when you weren't ready. That he never minded waiting, was never impatient when it came to the important things. If your relationship is a pot, it is Kagami who turns away each time, safe in the confidence that it will one day boil, and you are the one stuck watching, waiting for it to boil over. It never has, and you can't tell anymore if that's a good or a bad thing, what it would mean, unsure even with the constraints of the pot or your relationship, and maybe that too has been your fault.

Your professor, who had recently moved to a program in Beijing and is still on China time, spends a great deal of time talking about the problem of multi-word idioms and machine learning. Your favorite was always "一期一会," which sometimes gets automatically translated as "once a year" or, to your amusement, "once in a while." You close out the hotel bar, two restrained polite Japanese men gesturing over tiny glasses of melted ice and whiskey. When you get back to your room, it is past midnight. The bed is empty. For a moment, you are paralyzed that the whole thing was a hallucination. Had you missed him so much that you imagined him here, sleeping on your arms, close enough to touch? _But I was doing fine,_ you think, numbly pouring yourself a glass of water, _I was completely over—_

The door opens. You round on the sound so quickly it feels like the carpet should ignite. Kagami, in a black t-shirt and gym shorts, is frozen in the act of dropping of a hand towel on the floor. "Sorry," he stammers, "I went for a run, should have left a note—or knocked—"

"I wasn't—" you say, and then, through your teeth as he pulls off his shirt, "It doesn't matter, I didn't expect Kagami-kun to—"

"I wasn't thinking—" then, softly, with a sigh, "Kuroko."

This time, he takes you down with him. The sheets of the bed smell mostly like soap, but if you press your nose firmly into the pillow, you can detect it, the same smell as Kagami's body above you, mouth tender on your face even as his hands claw at your hips. You fuck that way, slowly, surrounded by him on all sides. It is like high school, and not at all the same, the smell of sweat and the desperation, his voice hesitant as he reaches for you, your reflections a half-dark echo. The truth is, you never did it like this back then. It is a dream of high school, the kind you have when your body misses something your heart still thinks you have. You fall asleep, holding yourself still so as not to touch Kagami, too afraid of disappointment.

In the morning Kagami is still there. He wafts bad coffee under your nose until you show signs of life and then, reverting to his American habits, takes a shower, calling out "it wakes you up!" over the sound of running water and your grumbling. Afterwards you watch him from the bed, half naked, as he towels his hair dry. "Why didn't you say anything?" you ask, because with a towel over his face, Kagami's eyes can't meet yours.

"Eh? Well, I—" He bites the edge of his towel, a bad habit you can sometimes spot on TV, when they broadcast the rare Lakers game and pan across the bench. "I wasn't sure if I could make it," he says finally. He beams at you. "And by the time I got here, I thought, maybe it would be a surprise. Momoi said you'd be pleased."

It's the line of a guileless man, the kind of pure human being who could listen to someone tell a story like, _listen, my friend heard I was in town for the night and rushed over to have sex,_ and never see anything indecent about the relationship. You hate him for a few, desperate seconds, letting that hate trickle down the line of Kagami's broad back, catch like the bright light of the window on his necklace, slide across his hair and skin dark against the white hotel towel. But it dissipates, like always, because of course he's right. You're pleased. This is what you had dreamed about, when you were in Tokyo wondering whether you should extend your stay and call up him anyway. Like all things Kagami, it's a dream that wanders, fully realized, into your palm, and waits for you to fuck it up.

You close your fist in the sheets. Kagami, grinning, throws his wet towel on your head, to get a rise out of you. "When's your flight?" he says, bouncing the bed as he sits down next to you.

"Monday."

"Seriously?" Kagami picks up a corner of the wet towel to peer at your face. "You want to come down to L.A.?"

You close your eyes. The excuse is easy, pre-prepared. "I already promised Aomine-kun I'd bring him Horikita Mai's latest."

"You know, I tried to teach that guy about real porn."

"Kagami-kun," you huff, disapprovingly.

"And he said it was too much effort, but apparently asking you to hand-deliver some half-nudes is totally okay."

"In this case, it's not him putting in the effort."

Even with your eyes closed, lying prone on the bed, you can follow Kagami's dressing routine beat by beat, from memory: pants first, left leg then right, the two arms of his black t-shirt, a pause before pulling it over his head, flipping the necklace out from under the neckline, then the two clasps of his watch, a gift from his father which he started wearing after he was drafted. The last time Kagami had been in Japan (what had it been for, you think, in a panic, before your brain supplies in a comforting rush, _Riko and Hyuuga's wedding_ ), you had wondered what socially accepted jewelry was still left. _Do piercings hurt,_ you'd asked Kise on a whim, which was a mistake. _TETSU-KUN DON'T YOU DARE_ , had been the ten texts you'd gotten the next day from Momoi, who since graduating high school had become more and more protective of your looks, the only thing she felt she could still control, and no matter how much you explained, you couldn't convince them that it wasn't for you, you weren't going through a rebellious phase.

"Well, you should hit me up when you get there," Kagami says, his voice distant as he goes to the corner to pick up last night's clothes. "We can have dinner or something before you go."

You push yourself up, letting Kagami's wet towel slide from your head. You replay the last two sentences, tugging at meaning and rearranging the words until you get to the right place. "Kagami-kun, you won't be home?"

"Oh, no, it's just—" He fumbles a sock, and has to dash for it under a chair. When he emerges, he grins sheepishly at you. "My dad is visiting. So."

Kagami has never been a good liar, and his attempts at equivocation are no better. His English is the stuff of dirty jokes, locker rooms, trash talk, metaphors only used in game analysis, and lines fed to him and memorized rote from PR manuals, almost entirely about basketball and never good at nuance. His Japanese is ruthlessly straight-forward, still caught somewhere in the last years of high school, and slowly degrading with every game he plays with the Lakers. When he still played on the same team with Aomine, they'd use it on each other during practice, but since being traded by the Clippers, the only person he routinely talks to in Japanese is his father, you, and, you suspect, Himuro on rare occasions. You finish the sentence yourself, trying out each possibility: _so I don't want you around_ , _so it'll be awkward, so I don't want to explain_ , _so I didn't ask you to come visit me before._ But he's spoken none of them out loud, so none of them sound right.

"I know you have two guestrooms," you tell him, finally getting out of bed. "You'll manage the both of us."

 _You cannot ask permission to win,_ Akashi used to say, staring at each of you in turn before setting you loose on the basketball court. _You must act as if your desired outcome is absolute_. That Teikou motto was once a part of you too: _ever victorious_. You make your way to the bathroom, wash your face, wet down your bed hair. Kagami fiddles with the strap of his gym bag, Himuro's ring between his teeth as he ponders. When you smile at him, you are absolute, summoning your best Akashi roleplay. The time for Kagami to object comes and goes. Eventually, he shrugs, and laughs when you imitate him, your shoulders moving in tandem. "It's your funeral," he says in English.

You stop midway through packing your toiletries, confused. "What does dying have to do with it?"

He rolls his eyes. "It means, 'suit yourself.'"

Kagami had driven all the way to San Francisco. He is not famous enough that the valet does anything more than blink when he hands over the keys. "I don't like planes," Kagami explains when you raise an eyebrow, "'cause the seats are so tiny."

In a car, you can turn back anytime, six hours worth of second-thoughts, but still, it brought him to you. You imagine him, impulsive, throwing a gym bag together with a haphazard change of clothes, texting his father once he was out of the city limits, no excuses because he had always been bad at half-lies as well. Annoyed with the time difference, which meant he couldn't check in with Momoi one last time. Maybe thinking about turning back at the three hour mark, but unable to waste the time and gas and the giant takeout cup of soda he'd already sunk into the idea.

These are the negative things only someone like you might imagine, you chide yourself. You'd been the person in high school who could imagine a meteor striking, killing everyone in Japan, just so you wouldn't lose a basketball game. He'd been the kind to say, _no way in hell, we'd never lose_ , without giving it a second thought.

"You sure you want to do this?" Kagami asks when the car swings into view.

"I want to drive," you tell him.

Kagami scowls. "No way in hell," he says and grabs your suitcase. You smile, sliding into the car after him.

San Francisco rolls out beneath you, a rocky sea of a city with no particular landmark for you to catch hold of. The two of you get utterly lost trying to figure out a way to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and end up pulling to one side to look at it from a distance. He takes a photo of the two of you, obligatory peace signs in the air, to send to Aomine. "I won't get a response," he says. "It's before noon. He's never up this early." He pulls up a website on his phone, slides it to you, a stream of photos and lists in English scrolling by, which he jabs at randomly. "Is there anything you wanted to see while we're here?"

 _You_ , you don't say, biting your lip. "What's it like where you grew up?"

Kagami laughs. "Nothing like this. L.A. is completely different. Not as hilly?" It's a question you don't know the answer to. He shrugs, then stops himself before you make fun of him. "Hotter, with lots of beaches."

"Show me that, then."

He grunts, playing catch with the keys as you walk back to the car. "Well, let's take the scenic route part of the way at least."

Having grown up in Tokyo almost all your life, you associate road trips almost wholly with basketball, traveling with Teikou or Seirin to matches. You've taken shorter drives before, a matter of hours in someone's rented car after a train ride to somewhere more remote. Six hours isn't a casual jaunt for Kagami either, but as he describes the landmarks between here and L.A., he ends up recounting a trip he'd taken with Himuro during the last off-season, up and down the coast for days. This same stretch, he tells you, rolling down the window so that the wind tears at his hair, making your mouth dry. Surfing in Monterey Bay, where Himuro swallowed too much water and was given CPR by four different attractive women. Los Padres Forest, where they watched a fire rip down the side of a mountain like a typhoon of smoke. Big Sur, where the water was the color of precious stone and there was a bridge "that Tatsuya had been obsessed with for some reason," he says. "We drove across it the first time without even realizing what it was but when he figured it out, he made us drive over a few more times just to get a good video for Instagram."

Where were you, you wonder, when they were blithely tearing down the coast? Waiting patiently for a call or a LINE from Kagami, probably. Counting down the days until the start of the NBA season, so that you'd have an excuse to talk to him, but only every other game, so that he wouldn't know you were tracking him. The story of your life since high school, an outdated model on stand-by, rummaging through the rubble for something to take away as a souvenir. Once in college Momoi had told you that the only thing she found unattractive about you was that you never grew out of playing house with Kagami. _We aren't like that,_ you joked with a small smile, _I'm Nigou's single mother,_ and she, not smiling at all, told you, _then stop living like you're just waiting for him to come home._ You didn't talk to her for weeks after that, the only way you knew how to pick a fight with her, and then you'd felt bad, and the two of you made up and as a general rule never talked about your relationship with Kagami ever again.

It wasn't her fault that she had gotten it wrong. Momoi had watched Touou send Aomine to America for a semester abroad, and he had stayed there, with rare visits home, ever since. But Kagami _had_ come home; that was the thing that kept you going after all these years. He'd left in the middle of your second year only to come back for two months in the third, wildly homesick and missing you, determined to never go back, and it took everything in you and the former Seirin basketball team to convince him that he would be crazy to give up what America could do for his basketball. Even then, he had begged you to come with him, embarrassingly in front of everyone as you bid him goodbye at the airport, and if you've ever held anything against him, it was that he made you say the words, _I can't do anything for you there,_ out loud for everyone else to hear. 

"Do you see Himuro-kun often?" you ask.

"Not that much. He has his own life." Kagami props an elbow on the edge of his open window. When he leans against it, he turns his head slightly to the right so he can see you out of the corner of his eye. "Everyone does, you know."

"Wouldn't it be better if you saw each other more?"

"Probably not," Kagami says absently. "Tatsuya likes to nag."

You swallow around the words there are no point in saying. His feelings about Himuro are no verdict on you, and it would never occur to him that you would take them that way. What Momoi had meant back then was that it was unattractive to let yourself be so caught up in a mindgame Kagami wasn't even capable of playing. But you fall into old habits around him, always searching for divine intervention. Each town you pass is a prayer to a foreign god. Pleasanton, San Jose, Modesto, Los Banos. _Let me stay here with him, in this car, let it go on and on and on._

It would be easier if he were a girl and you could just tell him, _let's get married. Let's spend our lives together_. Maybe that's why you'd jumped on the chance to meet his father, pin both of you to the dirt earth of commitment, make yourself real to someone else in his life, someone unconnected with basketball. But once upon a time you saw him as a divine being, on loan to you for a little while. As long as neither of you talk about the expiration date that has long since passed, then he can stay. As long as you keep one nervous, clammy grip around his ankle, he'll never ascend. Suspended, half-hearted, between heaven alone and the mundane with you, and you'll accept that sin. 

"Kagami-kun," you say.

"What's up," Kagami answers, automatic and in English. When he turns, embarrassed to have been caught, he says again, one more time, softer, "Hey, Kuroko."

"How much longer?" you ask.

"Still a long way. A couple of hours at last." He grins, so bright it is like a slap to your face. "It's too late to regret it now. You're stuck with me."

You see the road ahead of you, winding, long. Past your window, the fog rolls along the coast, not afraid of being left behind. Like a dog running along its owner in a hunt, it stalks in and out of the hills, playing fetch with your line of sight. You imagine the sunset, the way it was last night, when it was dusk and you were in the back of someone's car driving back from dinner and you didn't know you would push open the door of your hotel room and find him waiting for you. The sky had been the color of a fabric swatch, dyed indigo at the edges, each streetlamp winking like a child's vision of a star falling to the ground. Maybe you had made a wish on those streetlamps. Maybe that was what brought him to San Francisco, to you.

It's wrong to call down divinity too many times, but you can't help it. You'll be punished for it one day, you're sure. But for now, there is time. Time enough to hold on, time enough to get ready to let go. Once upon a time, when you were both young, he told you he liked you, _like that_ , and he's never taken it back. One day you'll stop making everything a test that he doesn't know he is taking and that he will eventually fail. But for now you hold onto what you can: until he takes it back, until you reach the end of your time together, he's yours. He's stuck with you.

"That's fine," you say. "I don't regret a thing."

**Author's Note:**

> \- unbetaed, all mistakes are my own  
> \- title still from tori amos' "[a sorta fairytale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_C23JCduok)"  
> \- this is actually not a rewrite of "a bet about us" but rather a rewrite of the first draft of the story, as discussed [here](http://retrocontinuity.tumblr.com/post/152302347118/a-bet-about-us-3k-kuroko-and-kagami-down-on-the). i've gone back to it since and now that i know what the happy version of this story looks like, it's easier to pick up the pieces on this less happy (but not necessarily sad!) version. i didn't have plans to post this originally, but when i went back to revisit, the two versions share less text than i thought, and i liked the way they flow into and out of each other, like kagami and kuroko are stuck in an endless loop of driving between san francisco and los angeles. it's up to you whether you read "a bet about us" as the sequel, like maybe this kuroko, once in la, will find the strength to propose (at least in his head) to kagami. "a bet about us" was an otp week fic, after all!  
> \- candle_beck made it ok to share [two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/255859) [versions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/255858) of the same story and i'll forever love her for that.


End file.
